Samuel Bregolin
More than forty years since the dictatorship of Efraín Ríos Montt, according to the FAFG, the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala, in charge of opening mass graves and recognizing the victims, only 5% of the 40,000 missing and missing persons have been found and identified.
The Guatemalan civil war, which occurred between 1960 and 1996, was one of the harshest and most horrendous conflicts in all of Latin America. The indigenous peoples, recognized at that time as an internal enemy by the Guatemalan army, were victims of genocide. According to the Commission for Historical Clarification, which in 1996 was in charge of writing the final report on the conflict, there were 200,000 victims and 40,000 missing people. Among other crimes, in the report the commission highlights that rape and sexual violence were used as a war strategy to disintegrate the indigenous social fabric and impose the submission of these populations to the armed military forces.
Today, there are still dozens of court cases in progress, including those related to sexual violence that occurred during the conflict. The judicial case called “Zepur Zarco” accuses some soldiers of rape and domestic slavery against six Ixil ethnic women, who were forced to cook for the soldiers for more than six months. The Zepur Zarco case was the first judicial case in which it was possible to demonstrate that, in a context of armed conflict and genocide, it is possible to recognize and condemn crimes of sexual rape at a distance of several decades from the events.
The court case called “Mujeres Achí” accuses six patrolmen of the Guatemalan army of having sexually abused 30 women of the Achí ethnic group, sentenced to 30 years in prison in the first term, the process is at that moment interrupted, waiting for the confirm the dates for the second stay. Other important processes, related to cases of sexual violence during the armed conflict, are the Ixil genocide case, the military newspaper case, the Molina Thiessen case, the Creompaz case and the Rancho Bejuco case. To mention only the most important and visible court cases.
The reasons why trials due to the conflict have been delayed for so many years are numerous: the Guatemalan army has never recognized the genocide and hinders the execution of judicial cases by every means. In addition, many large businessmen who have been involved in the conflict fear that the trials could affect them. The work of human rights defenders is constantly hindered and discriminated against by the “pact of the corrupt”, just as Guatemalan men and women refer to the political and economic elite, which makes it difficult for the processes to advance. but also the political change in the country.
In Guatemala there is no shared historical memory, the daughters and sons of people close to the army or the guerrilla have two completely different visions of what happened, and in many cases they simply ignore the facts. The passing of the years forces us to think of new strategies to involve the new generations and make them aware of the events that occurred in the country during the second half of the last century. The Ixcanul Foundation’s traveling screen, as well as other cultural events, aim to bring together different generations in front of the same screen and encourage dialogue and the construction of historical memory.
source El Salto
